Last Line: Joshua Cohen, Author Of "Cadenza for the "Schneidermann Violin Concerto"

...one I pray in the other I'll never step foot in you know business is business but if I should die before the debt's paid that's just my good luck I gave at the office I make a nice living hymn if all of you are here then who's minding the store whatsa matter you kids never seen a Yenkee before schmaltz or matjes one of our boys made it from here it's a local call because I didn't want my mouth to be filled with food if you should call you ate three the hostess says but who's counting then I figured the debate was over because he took out his lunch and so I took out mine okay okay alright already so bring me a piece pie nu better bring me an apple on a paper plate when it comes to my health the man's saying nothing's too expensive back home you could be sick on that money for three years they treat their help well...

This sentence isn't a joke, it's half of one. Specifically, the latter half. The last, long sentence of my forthcoming novel Graven Imaginings is made exclusively of punchlines, 108 of them to be exact, of which the above excerpt comprises the first 18. These punchlines—the kitschy payoffs to Jewish jokes, nostalgic-Semitic zingers approximately three to four generations out-of-date—have been stripped of their setups, then lined one after the other, without interruptions or comment, breath or comma, in a wandering, six-page sentence that serves to summate this one-thousand page novel I've been working on for most of the past decade—an epic about the last Jew in the world.

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In the novel,all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague—at midnight EST on Xmas Eve, December 1999—with the exception of the firstborn males, who become adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government, headed by the former Secretary of the Treasury, known variously by the (German) codenames Das, Der, and Die. With the backing of the American Administration, this remnant is ingathered to New York City, and housed within the reopened immigration facility of Ellis Island, in an attempt to preserve them from undue scrutiny, and harm. By the eve of Passover, the rest of them have died out, save One: Benjamin Israelien, of Joysey; a golem-type, religiously and culturally ignorant, but a kindly soul nonetheless. In the year that follows, He becomes quite the celebrity: as they say in advertising, "women want him, men want to be him." Like God, He's "omni," broadcast everywhere, but In Living Color: on infomercials, in talkshow appearances, starring in a Las Vegas revue, even engaged to marry the President's daughter....

That's where the first half of the book ends. The second half questions the first, opening with the idea that all the world's non-Jews, the "Unaffiliated," begin to usurp Jewish identity. Suddenly, eating matzoball soup is the thing to do; yarmulkes are hip, trendy, in-fashion. In essence, everyone in the world begins to become Jewish ("Affiliated"—I should note that the word "Jew" appears nowhere in this book, neither the terms "Jewish," "Judaism," etc.), leaving Israelien, the only truly racinated Jew, anathematized for his lack of observance. As His very existence seems to expose the illegitimacy of those newly converted, Israelien becomes the object of a mad, around-the-world chase, and flees to Europa to hide from former friends, countrymen, and the government that loved him so well.

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Toward novel's end, Israelien is left alone in the Europa that betrayed His people, made resident to a town from which His ancestors emigrated generations before. His fantastic narrative is then abandoned (pitilessly), and the reader is returned to a Realist world—the world in which this novel has been written.

Making a break with the book's previous six sections, Graven Imaginings finishes with a monologue delivered by another "Last Jew — Joseph, the last-living survivor of the Holocaust, dying in the near future at the northernmost reach of snowbound Manhattan. This Methuselahnian Joseph, an Israelien made "real," gives his final, deathbed witness, unoriginal and so, inevitable, in the form of the only recollections left him—these 108 dissevered jokes, told in part, untold in part (certainly there is a numerical significance to the sum of 108, but I will save the explanations, expecting at least half of my audience to be practicing Kabbalists).

Here we have the aftermath, the late returns—what has survived is in ruins, and so the humor of Joseph's jokes is to be found only in memory, provided through experience.

Nonetheless, it is humor still.

Here are the sources of two:

I make a nice living

An elderly man, while crossing East Broadway, is hit by a car. A young beautiful blonde hurries up to him, bleeding on the asphalt. She holds his wounded head in her arms, cradles him between her breasts, as they wait for an ambulance.

"Are you comfortable?" she asks.

He says, "I make a nice living."

schmaltz or matjes

A matchmaker is trying to convince a young man to accept marriage to a young woman in their community.

"She's brilliant, kind, and a great cook," she says. "She would make a wonderful mother for your children."

The young man is dubious, but eager. He says, "Sounds too good to be true."

The matchmaker hesitates, then admits: "The only problem is, she looks like a herring."

The young man asks, "Schmaltz or matjes?"

In a variant telling, the joke continues:

The matchmaker thinks for a moment, says, "Schmaltz."

And the young man says, "Too bad! If you had said matjes she might have had a chance!"

Why This Is Funny, or A Note On Herrings:

Schmaltz herring is filleted mature, fatty herring that has been cured with coarse salt for a day or two. Reddish matjes herring is also filleted, but soaked in a brine of sugar and vinegar, and, unlike ethnic humor, is best served relatively fresh.

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